Day: November 29, 2013

Annabeth: My fatal flaw. That’s what the Sirens showed me. My fatal flaw is hubris.Percy: The brown stuff they spread on veggie sandwiches?Annabeth: No, Seaweed Brain. That’s HUMMUS. Hubris is worse.Percy: What could be worse than hummus?Annabeth: Hubris means deadly pride, Percy. Thinking you can do things better than anyone else… Even the gods.Rick Riordan, The Sea of Monsters

You think you know it all, and so you try to show off your talents. That’s when hubris makes you fall. So today, with company for the weekend, in between chess games, ukulele songs and great conversation, I produced the dough I’d been cold-fermenting in the fridge since Sunday. Should be just about perfect. Time to show off my new breadmaking skills.

It’s not something you should do while nattering, while showing one another Youtube videos, while trying to show another person a new song arrangement.

Mind half on other things, I shaped the cold dough, put one mix in a ceramic pot, the other in a bread pan to warm up. Let them rise while I carried on. Clearly not quite long enough or warm enough. But I wasn’t really watching. Was the dough high enough? Awake enough? Our house is cool, so dough doesn’t rise very rapidly.

Should have warmed the pot first, but no… and forgot the lame; forgot to score the tops. Bakers shouldn’t be so distracted. Too many things to do, too many rituals to follow.

Then I baked them together at 450 for… ? Yipes. I forgot to record the time. Was it 30 minutes? 35? Best guess… look at the tops. Seem done…

Took the lid off the pot a little late, too. That might have kept the steam inside a little too long the kamut bread.

Diego’s Quotes

"No humane being, past the thoughtless age of boyhood, will wantonly murder any creature which holds its life by the same tenure that he does. The hare in its extremity cries like a child. I warn you, mothers, that my sympathies do not always make the usual phil-anthropic distinctions."Henry David Thoreau, Walden, Ch. 11: Higher Laws